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Monday, 25 March 2013

Summary - Part 1

Hello, what’s your name? Mine is Major Gubbins, eight times reincarnated beard muse turned clumsy humanoid, with elusive life-giving powers, introverted musical aspirations and oddball social tomfoolery in spades.Have you managed to digest that yet? Good, then I shall continue.To mark the one year anniversary of our first ripples on the web, I thought that I’d summarise everything that me and my creative brethren have been through. Accompanied with the odd in-depth recollection and some of our favourite posts, photos, doodles and sounds. Ready? Come on then.

To do our story justice, I must go back a little further than a year. The 15th November 2011, to be exact. The date I burst from my viaduct egg, saved TONE. (the rather lovely bluebottle who’s a devil with a pencil) from a spider’s brunch and began a friendship that would be stronger than a body building ox.

We travelled in vain through vents for days, until we fell into the drab dwellings of Leroy Craddock (an inquisitive old gentleman with a heart so golden we almost stuck him in an envelope and cashed him in).

I introduced my small beardy self whilst he was arguing with a scavenged PC he’d found from a fly-tipping hotspot. Luckily for him, TONE. is quite the dab hand with electronics and had the manky machine up and running in a matter of minuet moments, turning Mr. Craddock’s frown upside down.

A cup of tea and a wee natter later and Leroy obligingly offered up his square inch of cluttered spare room as some kind of repayment for reviving the computer. To which TONE. and I gratefully accepted; me sleeping in the bottom drawer of a chocker-block wardrobe and TONE. on the dusty wicker lampshade.

The next morning, during a breakfast of runny egg and soldiers, Leroy told us that if we helped shift some of the clutter that we could stay with him indefinitely. So, what with nowhere else to go and an ever growing fondness for Mr. Craddock, we agreed.

Amongst the mounds of old TV guides and broken Eternal Beau crockery we found some true gems, including, in ‘Generation Game’ stylie: two guitars, a dozen boxes of envelopes, a few packs of post-it notes, two drum machines, a scanner/printer combo, a camera, pens, paper and a rag mag from many moons ago.

Leroy swore he’d never seen the mag before (and we sort of believed him, what with most of this stuff coming from the side of the road), but said that we could keep the hidden treasures, as they were only going to the Charity Shop anyway.

Over the next passing months TONE. prolifically put pen to paper creating dozens of doodles on a daily basis.

'Screamer!' by TONE. - One of TONE.'s first doodles.

He even begun tinkering around with the ancient version of Photoshop on the PC, taking turns with me who had started recording and writing disgruntled ditties on the dusty DAW.We grew into a family and continued in our creative infinity, until one day in February 2012. The day I questioned my purpose.You see my lovelies, I was unsure of why, in this reincarnation, I wasn’t placed firmly on someone’s chin being ‘the beard to stroke in times of deepest contemplation’. Maybe, and only maybe, it was my time to shine, to be my own beard. With this freshly filleted thought and an ink wheedling bluebottle to my side we set our fussy sights on all things creative and fun.

That’s it for this, the first post of five. For a more in-depth take on how TONE., Leroy and I met, why not have a read through the true accounts ‘Origins of Major Gubbins - Parts 1 and 2’ written by The Third Person (a sporadic member of my consciousness whom pops up every now and again spewing up stylised versions of the past).